173 comments

How to Be Slim

If you could sum up Mustachianism in one word, it would be “Control”.

When people come into the confines of this blog from the outside world, they’re shivering and worn after spending a lifetime buffeted by the storms of unfettered capitalism. They feel like their lives are out of control, and that other people are the ones deciding their fate. Their happiness, wealth, and even health are decided by the politicians, or the economy, or the corrupt corporate leaders. And to a certain extent, they are right – through the pervasive nature of marketing and political lobbying, many of the features of the modern world are designed to politely and pleasantly enslave you, so that you will work for a lifetime while agreeably handing over everything you earn to buy products and pay interest on loans.

When you embrace Mustachianism, you start to recover immediately, as you see the excess of your past lifestyle. But it is still a long journey to full freedom, because you need to get control over not only your spending, but over your desires as well. Your goal is not simply to force yourself to buy less stuff – it’s to feel ultimate happiness about a whole new way of life, which just happens to involve buying less stuff.

So what we’re really doing is learning to gain some control over our own minds. We do it by learning about ourselves, about our true needs as a species, and about other cultures and philosophies. These are not things that the television advertisements teach you about, because the very knowledge has the power to destroy the Sukka Consumer mindset that keeps companies like Cadillac and Tiffany and Louis Vuitton in business. But the knowledge is there, and it’s old and golden, dating back thousands of years.

Once you learn that controlling your own mind is the sole key to succeeding in life, you can start applying the control to areas of life other than just becoming wealthy. You can begin breaking old destructive habits like addiction to various drugs, TV watching, and even the circular self-denial regarding food and exercise that leads most of us to be less physically fit than we would like to be.

Physical fitness may sound rather different than financial independence, but it’s actually the same thing – it is control over your mind, which means it is part of Mustachianism. Because I care for you, I must ensure that you end up healthy and fit just as I must ensure that you become wealthy at a young age.

How to Be Slim:

I really like the idea of being healthy. I’ve enjoyed about 21 years of regular weight training and 32 years of cycling so far. I’m not one of those buff musclemen you see in front of the college bars, but I have plenty of secret inner health that keeps me going in the form of extra energy, resistance to sickness and injury, and confidence in the face of hardship.

So when I see other people my age who have already lost their ability to walk or become dependent on heart drugs, just because of their earlier food and exercise behavior, I am very curious about the huge mental battle they surely endured as they slipped down that path.

Doing some research on the matter, it seems that there are two major factors that are causing the massive fat gain in modern society today:

  • Lack of understanding of what even constitutes good diet and exercise (people thinking it is fine to drink Coke or have a day where the only exercise involves walking to and from a car, etc.)
  • Psychological problems with resisting the urge to do things they know are bad for them (binge eating, exercise avoidance)

I try not to rant about these things too much, because I know I can’t see the world through the same lens as someone with these problems.  But I did recently come across a great BBC series that addresses the problem in a very smart and educational manner. Check out all six of the ten-minute parts on YouTube when you get a chance someday:

BBC the Truth about Food – How to be Slim

Here are my thoughts on the show, in case you want to compare notes:

It’s a simple and catchy documentary, with good music and some nice British wit thrown in. The most valuable part to me was how it used experiments on real people to debunk common myths that compromise people’s weight loss goals:

“I’m fat because I have a slow metabolism” – wrong! Fatter people actually tend to have faster metabolisms, because their bodies are working hard to maintain the extra tissue and pump blood through the constricted blood vessels. In most cases, overweight people simply eat more due to higher appetite, without realizing it. The key is to find ways to take in fewer calories, without feeling like you are starving yourself. It’s addressed in the documentary, but I’ll give you a hint: eat more protein and cut out bread if you need to lose fat!

“Calories consumed are always digested fully” – surprisingly, foods that are high in calcium tend to block digestion of fats that are in the stomach at the same time. In the show, test subjects eat a variety of diets, and save their own dung in plastic bins for later analysis. Then attractive Danish women meticulously processed and burned the logs, finding much more undigested fat in the output of  the test subjects who ate low-fat yogurt as a calcium supplement.  Danish scientists theorize that the calcium causes the fat to bind into a less digestible substance in your stomach, so it ends up getting excreted.

This may explain why I lost fat when I switched my typical breakfast from cereal and whole-wheat toast to a higher fat (and calcium) one including almonds, cheddar cheese and fried eggs. The higher protein of this breakfast also probably reduces my urge to snack throughout the morning (I was formerly famous for the size of my “Second Breakfast”).

“Portion size affects how much we eat” – true: studies revealed that when you double the portion size given to an unsuspecting test subject, he’ll tend to eat about 45% more.

“Keep a food diary” – it really works. Just whip out your phone and snap a picture of everything you eat, just before you eat it. The mere act of becoming conscious enough to record your eating, makes you much more likely to eat well and avoid frivolous snacks like oreos and nachos in front of the football game.

I’ll also throw in something from my own set of tricks:

“Learn to appreciate mild hunger” – it’s an unusual feeling for a rich-world person, but once you get used to it, having a slight craving in your tummy can make you feel invigorated and warriorlike. When you are really hungry, eat a good meal. But if you’re just slightly hungry, imagine that your body has moved its suction tube from the usual “stomach” setting, over to “stored fat reserves”. It is now a positive challenge to maintain this mild hunger as long as possible, because you want to keep that suction going for many hours each day. You should still strategically throw in nutrients during this stage, like a plate of celery, cucumber, or carrots. But keep the burn going and build your hunger enjoyment skills – it can lead to a whole new level of control over your appetite, and thus you can maintain any weight you like, right down to the last half-pound.

This is not to be confused with anorexia, where an already-skinny person starves themselves into a skeleton. I’m talking about people with a visible beer belly, eating vegetables instead of ice cream for their bedtime snack – and enjoying it.

“Weightlifting is a the world’s best Fat Vacuum Cleaner” – it takes more than 4,000 calories to build a single pound of muscle. But as a beginner to weight training, a person can trigger over one pound of lean muscle gain with a single full-body workout! So to lose a pound of fat and gain a pound of muscle, you can spend about eight hours sweating on a stationary bike, or several days of mild hunger, or you  can do one or two good intense sets of squats, bench presses, and bent-over barbell rows, and lose a pound of fat just like that.

So to summarize How to be slim: watch the documentary and apply the principles to your own eating. Take up very easy weightlifting at home. It will happen quickly, once you can control your mind enough to keep these activities happening without giving up! If you stumble on this quest, realize the problem is entirely in your mind, and just keep working on taming that old noodle.

How have YOU tamed the natural human natural tendency to ignore physical fitness – or struggled to do so?

  • Emmers January 30, 2012, 1:44 pm

    I love the frugality posts, but I’m less convinced by this one (based on the lived experience of myself and people I know).

    I’m naturally slim, and people are always complimenting me for it — but I don’t *do* anything to “earn” my slimness. I eat when I am hungry and stop when I am full; I exercise when I feel like it. And yet my BMI (just to give you the basic ballpark) is 21.

    I have a dear friend who constantly went hungry and miserable (basically, starving herself) to maintain a “correct” BMI…when she started to focus on eating healthy foods instead of calorie restriction, her weight went up (she’s now technically obese) but all of her “numbers” (blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides, etc.) are fantastic.

    Given the progression of the other women in my family (regardless of childbearing, diet, or physical activity), there’s a very good chance that I will become overweight within the next two decades. I’m not too bothered by this — but what I *am* bothered by is the assumptions that everyone around me will be making about my personal character.

    But their assumptions won’t matter, because I will be rich and retired, with good blood cholesterol. ;-)

    Anyway, just wanted to throw out a “loyal opposition” kind of comment. I just discovered your blog today, and I’ve loved reading it! Just disagree about this post. People should eat right and exercise because those are good ways to maintain overall health — but if they gain five pounds while doing so, ***as long as all other body systems are go***, that is nothing to be concerned about.

    Reply
    • MMM January 30, 2012, 4:06 pm

      Hey Emmers – I think you’ve got a healthy attitude about things, but we’ll just have to agree to disagree on the slimness part.

      From what I understand about muscle and fitness (after the aforementioned 20 years of weightlifting and book-reading on the subject), ALMOST anyone can have a low-fat and high-muscle body. And by almost, I mean well over 90% of us.

      My own body is not naturally all that great on its own – it wants to be fat. If I exercised only the average amount, and ate the average diet, I’d be pretty large and flabby. Certain long vacations I’ve taken in the past have proven this to me with very rapid fat gain.

      Not everyone cares about this, and that’s fine – you have a good point that it is possible to be quite healthy even with some visible bodyfat.

      But I happen to really enjoy staying in more athletic condition. I like to have a few veins running this way and that on my arms and legs, and the traditional 6-or-8 pack of abs. I feel more energetic and happy when I’m in that condition, and I think many readers also desire the same thing. This article is suggesting that you CAN do it, if you learn about how the body works.

      Reply
      • Bakari January 31, 2012, 9:14 am

        You might both be right.

        Emmers only mentioned “BMI” and “weight”, neither of which takes into account the proportions of fat and muscle that make up the body.
        Arnold Schwarzenegger, at the height of his career, was morbidly obese by BMI standards, with a bodyfat percentage of 6%.
        If all a person does is restrict calories and lots of cardio, they may lose fat only, (and become skinny but still not be fit), but if a person does real exercise, they can lose fat yet gain weight.

        Muscle weighs more than fat (18% by volume)

        Reply
  • Chris March 29, 2012, 2:38 pm

    “Learn to appreciate mild hunger” – Dare I call this The Hunger Games?

    Reply
  • Michelle April 11, 2012, 11:26 am

    This discussion and the blog post remind me of advise a friend gave me many years ago:

    “You know the secret to quitting smoking?”
    “No, what’s that?”
    “Don’t smoke.”

    And when I decided it was time for me to stop smoking, it was exactly that simple. I decided not to smoke, exerted self-control, and haven’t smoked since.

    Reply
  • The Perpetual Student July 15, 2012, 1:41 pm

    As for appreciating hunger, I feel like we have two hungers: Stomach Hunger and Body Hunger.

    Stomach Hunger is what you feel in your belly. It can be unpleasant and annoying, but it goes away. Body Hunger is what comes back later, making you feel weak and wobbly and cranky, etc. You know what I mean?

    Feed Body Hunger. Ignore Stomach Hunger.

    Reply
    • Kira September 30, 2014, 1:46 pm

      In my experience, body hunger is low blood sugar brought on by over-indulging in carbs in a previous meal.

      Reply
  • LT October 9, 2012, 11:22 am

    I love your point about “appreciating mild hunger.” This is something that more people need to learn to do. Also, your body generally can’t tell the different between hunger and thirst (the can feel the same way if you don’t have the dry mouth sensation yet). Next time you feel slightly hungry, take a drink of water and see if that helps at all. It works for me most of the time.

    Reply
  • Mavenger October 24, 2012, 12:02 am

    Okay. I’ve read the whole blog up to this point, and I’m working my way to the newer stuff slowly and steadily! One thing I must disagree with are your exercise statements. The single most effective exercise you can do to lose weight is to run, period. Get off the couch and go for a run. The squat might be the most effective exercise (I’m thinking of an earlier article here), but you can’t do several hours’ worth of squats. My first marathon took me six hours. I could NEVER hope to do squats for that long. Ride a bike at a reasonable pace (12-14 mph)for 30 minutes, then run at a reasonable pace (9:00 mile) for 30 minutes. Running burned one and a half times the calories.

    Also, something I’ve found to be far, far more important than which exercise is the best is that to an alarming degree, quantity > quality. If you exercise mostly poorly every day, you will be slimmer than the guy that has one phenomenal workout once a week.

    Sorry to comment so late, but I just had to say something!

    Reply
  • AndrewInDenmark August 25, 2013, 2:02 pm

    I know it’s way late, but if you’ve made it through the post and all the comments to get this far you might be interested enought to watch “The Weight of the Nation” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pEkCbqN4uo). This 4-episode HBO series discusses obesity in more depth and without the “info-tainment” style of the BBC series.

    Reply
  • Robert Goodfliesh December 21, 2013, 2:47 pm

    Also consider the findings of Michael Mosley at
    http://www.thefastdiet.co.uk

    that a calorie restricted diet 2 days a week is not only a good weight loss tool, but also a good way to fight high cholesterol and blood sugar.

    This worked for me!

    Reply
  • GreyBeard February 8, 2014, 3:45 am

    I think one of the biggest problems with diet and exercise is information overload. (Also, true regarding finances.) There are so many choices and conflicting points of view that people become paralyzed.

    I’m one that got bogged down for many years in all of the conflicting and competing claims about diet and exercise. (I’m almost 55) The result is I tried this and that and would give up and try something else, and then do nothing while i got fat and unhealthy thinking about what to try next. I could not establish a routine.

    After injuring my back and shoulder (because I was overweight and weak), I finally decided there had to be a simple way to get healthy that didn’t require extreme food deprivation and body torture.

    This is what I decided to do and what has been working for me:

    Diet:
    The thing that helps me the most is to keep my diet simple and predictable. I drink one cup of black coffee every morning and generally eat one of three breakfasts – a poached egg and a piece of toast; a bowl of oatmeal; or some breakfast meat when I just want protein – like a couple of sausage links or a few pieces of turkey bacon.

    For lunch I have a can of soup and a piece of fruit and maybe some carrots, if I’m more hungry. This has become an almost religious thing for me. There is a huge variety of soups. They are inexpensive, and frequently discounted. I used to get really hungary at mid-day after “lunch” and raid the pantry or vending machine for cookies, candy, chips, plus whatever “lunch” was. I don’t do that anymore.

    My wife and I rotate about a dozen things we like to cook and eat for dinner. They include salads, crock pot recipes, rice dishes and plain old hamburgers or baked chicken. I like to eat a low-fat yogurt for desert before going to bed.

    Once a week we get the urge to make waffles for breakfast or grill some ribs, or do some fancy recipe to keep it interesting and romantic, but that’s it. No more than one high calorie breakfast and dinner per week.

    I drink ice water, not sodas and fruit juices. We only consume alcohol on the weekend. The rule is no more than two beers or glasses of wine, or one cocktail, per day. I like gin martinis and the concept of a cocktail hour (60 minutes) to consume adult beverages.

    Good basic fare in reasonable portions. Easy to budget, shop for and plan. I think people over think food and make it hard because of all the choices available. They either limit themselves too much and it gets really boring, or they go too exotic with fad diets and then fail.

    Exercise:
    I have struggled to find a sustainable exercise routine my entire life. I have had machines, biked, and joined gyms. I have read books and watched videos. This is what I do now.

    First thing every morning, my wife and I walk our dogs for at least two miles or about 30 minutes. On weekends we usually do five miles, but might wait until later in the day, We go when it is 30 degrees (the dogs love the cold) and when it is 90 degrees (in the morning when it is not so hot).

    Once a day, usually after breakfast, I do a one minute plank and then arch my back and really stretch my neck out. Next I do two dozen lunges. Then I do a dozen pushups. These three exercises combined take about 7-8 minutes or so. Who doesn’t have seven or eight minutes to do some warm-up exercises each day?

    Then I garb some barbells, stretch with the weight in my hands, do 30 reps of a bent over exercise (like rowing), and then do about 30 reps of some curling or over overhead lifting. I have a slightly different routine each day that I wrote down and posted inside the medicine cabinet. I probably use the weights for about 7-8 minutes as well. Total “workout” time is about 15 minutes. That’s all I do and I feel great, the weight came off, my clothes fit and I have much more energy during the day.

    One thing I love about this exercise routine is if I get pressed for time or if I am traveling, I can at least do the plank, lunge, pushup thing just about anywhere at anytime of day.

    The key for me is no exceptions. It must be done every single day.

    My theory – which is just common sense – is our bodies were made to be worked physically every day. Every other day workouts, exotic machines and marathon gym sessions don’t work for me. My dog lets me know when it is time to get up and walk. Doing that, plus stretching, pushups and lifting some heavy stuff until I’m breathing hard is all it took for me to get my fitness back.

    Reply
  • Alistair Nicol March 4, 2015, 10:33 am

    Did you ever take a look at the Warrior Diet or one of the copycat variations. Basically no carbs for breakfast and lunch, while eating mostly raw foods (nuts/veg) and then a giant dinner to get to normal calorie intake.

    I used it for a while and really enjoyed the energy all day with mild hunger and the satisfaction of the huge meal at dinner time and the drowsy effects afterwards. I also got down to 6% body fat with no change in workouts. Better results and I didn’t have to consume 6 meals a day. :)

    Reply
  • Felipe April 4, 2015, 8:14 pm

    Love the blog, I notice you mention lifting weights a lot. Which I love and do, but I haven’t seen you mention the power of handstand push-ups, pull-ups, dips, and rows which can be done with a nice tree, some craigslist olympic rings if you want to get fancy.

    Reply
  • Felipe April 4, 2015, 8:17 pm

    Love the blog, I notice you mention lifting weights a lot. Which I love and do, but I haven’t seen you mention the power of handstand push-ups, pull-ups, dips, and rows which can be done with a nice tree, some craigslist olympic rings if you want to get fancy.

    Sidenote- the link in the article doesn’t work anymore. Here’s one that does: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x12iizw_the-truth-about-food-how-to-be-slim-bbc-documentary-series_people

    Reply
  • Cheryl May 4, 2015, 2:04 pm

    How To Be Slim, for Awesome Females:

    This will work for males as well, I just think a male is more likely to want to deliberately work out, and (very generally speaking) females are more likely to just want to look better. Working out? No, no, there’s no working out in this plan.

    1) Bike to work. This isn’t working out, this is commuting in a cheap and green way. Be smug. Brag to your coworkers. Swear you’re going to do this all year!

    2) After a few weeks (four, tops), notice that you are in fact only biking about three days a week. Morning you is not always good at long-term decision making. Sell your car.
    2 b) I’m serious. Gone. Sell.

    3) Now you’re biking every day! Receive complement on how good you look. Discover healthier food cravings – soda will not power your bike.

    4) The grocery store is too close too even bother getting on your bike. Walk.

    5) Walking is nice! Get a lot of apps that give you meaningless rewards for walking. Find yourself taking the long way home to get a badge in a silly app. These are fun!

    6) Start looking for other fun apps. GPS games? Geocaching? Find yourself in the fitness app section. This is an accident. You’re not a “fitness person”. But there are a lot of GPS games here!

    7) What’s “Zombies, Run!”?

    8) Run. This isn’t exercise; the zombies will catch you if you stop.

    9) Start to have a sneaking suspicion that you are, in fact, into “fitness”. That copy of Runner’s World by the toilet and the gift card to a sports store you got for Christmas should have tipped you off, but it’s getting a Facebook invitation to join “Runkeeper” that makes you finally admit it.

    10) Dominate the Runkeeper leader board. After all, you bike to work, bike home, walk to the store, then run from zombies, sometimes all in one day!

    11) Notice you do all legs. Look into body weight exercises. Push ups are hard and burpees are worse.

    12) Wonder why your friend thinks it’s exhausting to do a two mile hike during vacation. There can’t be that much of a difference between the two of you, surely? After all, it’s not like you’re really in shape. You can barely even do a ten minute mile! It’s not like you’re one of those ultra runners!

    13) Wonder if marathons are hard.

    As you can see, at no point during that process do you work out to lose weight! In fact, you completely forget about weight except for when some of your clothes are now to big on you! Which is super annoying, clothes shopping is such a pain. I wonder if it’s hard to take in clothes….

    Reply
  • E. July 28, 2015, 1:03 am

    I’ve been quietly reading posts, but this post made me sigh, so I had to chime in with a little actual science here.

    Basic FAQ: http://thisisthinprivilege.org/faq

    Even more studies: http://www.fatnutritionist.com/index.php/articles-evidence/

    Obesity doesn’t harm people as much as the stigma around it, and shaming and blaming people plays into that stigma. Spend the afternoon reading those studies and you’ll shake off a LOT of the bullshit the weight loss tries to feed you. It’s not very Mustachian to accept the “need” for a billion-dollar industry uncritically.

    Reply
    • Mr. Money Mustache July 28, 2015, 2:15 pm

      Howdy E. The website you cited sounds like standard “Fat Acceptance Movement” fare, which certainly means well but is much more ideological than it is scientific.

      In fact, the science seems to be pointing us even further towards the field of living on a surprisingly low-calorie diet and even fasting intermittently (although not for women in the planning stage of having children).

      So although I agree that our society should work to be aware of our weight-based discrimination problem, I’d also encourage people to feel like they DO have control over their body fat percentage. If I ate like “normal” people and did an average level of exercise, I’d be about 250 pounds with a pear-shaped belly. Even a week of doing this packs on about 10 pounds.

      My big objection with FAM ideology is the idea that it’s all genetic setpoints and out of our control. If this were true, we wouldn’t have a population that is enormously fatter than we were in 1950. The genetics have stayed the same, but we’ve added sugar and processed foods while subtracting physical activity. Result: massive growth in the average human!

      I have to make conscious food decisions and skip my desire to eat pumpkin pie every day, just as I have always done since about age 16, and it is a truly enjoyable fight that I will never quit. The fight is fun and the results are great. Feeling in control of my own body, just as I have learned to be in control of money and spending, is one of the joys of life.

      Reply
      • Amonymous August 16, 2016, 9:31 am

        RE: Fighting the desire to eat pumpkin pie every day

        I just realized I’ve been trying to fight off consumerism since I started working (prior to discovering MMM). Couple of years ago I Tweeted: “Fighting consumerism to the death.” I had just received a hefty bonus and was so tempted to get the latest iPhone — NOPE, didn’t budge.

        To the death, I say!

        Reply
  • webdevguy87 August 12, 2015, 9:36 am

    Hey MMM,

    Love what you’ve got to say here. You should update the video link with the following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EkQeeCiYoo.

    Cheers!

    Reply
  • Olaf July 24, 2016, 1:53 pm

    >Then attractive Danish women meticulously processed and burned the logs,

    Dude, I’ve been devouring your blog for a couple weeks now, and you absolutely crack me up at times!

    Reply
  • Keren June 28, 2017, 6:08 am

    This is what works for me:
    – Reading the book “Eat To Live”, which teaches you how distorted and desease inducing the western way of eating is.
    – Learning about nutrition from Harvard School for Public Health and ignoring any other source. Sticking to science.
    – Being a vegan, eating mostly a wide variety of vegetables, grains, legumes, and fruit, and preparing all of my simple food myself from raw materials. Drinking plenty of water and staying away from simple carbohydrates and processed foods like white rice, bread, etc. The only people that need to be gluten free are those few with a diagnosed gluten intolerance. For the rest of us, it’s a good source of protein.
    – hasfit dot com – their workout plans are completely free and they’re excellent and effective.
    – taking the stairs and not the elevator.
    – realizing I had a food addiction – eating not because I’m hungry but because I crave food. Learning about addiction, CBT, mindfulness and practicing the techniques for “riding the wave” of craving for what’s bad for me.
    That’s basically it. Very simple and doable, for me at least. Though it took me a long time to get there, especially in terms of state of mind.

    Reply
  • Connelly Barnes August 14, 2017, 8:30 pm

    I have found I can have pretty fine-grained control over my weight by simply controlling the proportion of vegetables in my diet, combined with the regular aerobic exercise and strength training, and eating for the most part whole (unprocessed) foods. For me, this does not result in hunger. If I want my weight to go down, I just eat more vegetables. If I want my weight to go up, I eat more nuts, meat, breads.

    Reply
  • Shfarmgirl November 13, 2017, 9:10 pm

    I think most people who commented on this post would benefit from reading Wheat Belly. Fascinating book on how the wheat we are fed is no longer the wheat we think it is and since it started being modified in the 50s our bellies have grown with each of it’s changes. Your organic artisan bread with ancient grains is the same twisted product unrecognized by the body as wonder bread, the powdered flour wheat on gum and in chicken breeding, pasta, crackers and starches in gravies. We eat so much wheat because it’s cheap ( due to subsidies and cheap fuel) and its killing us, messing with our insulin and metabolisms. Feed the world with wheat started during the 1st World war when European allies left their fields to fight with us. American farmers started receiving subsidies to grow more crops to feed the world. Cheap fuel allowed the country to be tilled up. All the small farms and businesses have been bought up by 6 huge businesses, Monsanto, Con Agra etc with deep pockets and political ties to continue their subsidies and cry to feed a starving world to ship cheap grain to 3rd work countries. But these grains aren’t good for us! GMO, annuals that are totally man made (perennials are much healthier and naturally reproduce) we re feeding ourselves and others basically a fake food that causes numerous health issues. Grass, perennial cellulose feeds all animals, grazers eat it, their manure feeds it , reseeded it and then carnivores eat it. All those grain fields of gmo soy, wheat and corn is supplying be tjick tall 6′ grasses animals eat and we eat them. They don’t want to eat grains! Their bodies rebel with sickness so now big pharma steps in with antibiotics to quell their ills so we can keep that grain growing to feed them to fatten and feed us. Big pharma has deep pockets and political ties too, until gas is 10x more these subsidies encourage the unhealthy condition of the world. We need grasses, perennial seeds and nuts, fish, GRASS fed meats. Read the Vegetarian Myth and Wheat Belly And Joel Salatin’s books if you’d like to know more. But this whole animals are killing the earth bs isn’t the animals, it’s how we keep and feed the animals and don’t spread the manure to feed the earth as it tries to grow out with new topsoil. and how we be made Wheat into a great crop but not a good we can recognize or utilize

    Reply
  • Simplesam April 23, 2018, 9:07 am

    Because my favorite places to waste money in the past had always been restaurants, this part of the philosophy fits me to a T. It’s interesting to me that just now as I’m building up my frugality muscles, I’ve noticed how closely frugality and eating well are connected. This year I’ve decided to shun restaurants entirely- even coffeehouses and delis- and see how that changes my life. Wish me luck!

    Reply
  • Tom February 8, 2021, 9:24 pm

    The 2012 YouTube link to the BBC documentary no longer works; however, the video is on DailyMotion. You can do a Google search for it, or if Sir MMM allows links in posts, just click here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3fhjpl

    Reply

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